I mean this: imagine an engineer who "adds not measurable value to an organization".... while technically possible, it certainly ought to be quite rare! Why? Because an engineer KNOWS that what he works on does X for the company: creates a new product. improves the quality of a product. etc... And they know X numbers of product, or Y% of quality improvement.

Now, what about a marketer? If you write a report, does it add value? If you "make an ad" does it add value? If you build a website, does it add value? If you write Facebook posts, do they add value? If you write a blog post, does it add value? If you organize an event, does it add value? If you manage a print ad, did it create value? Did the brand you invented add value? WOW. If you say no to any of those... you are in trouble. But the hard part is "how much value did you add?".

Here is the beginnings of how to measure Marketing Value:

First, establish the fact that eyeballs have a value. (call it $0.001 or something).

Establish the fact that an Email or Like/Follow has a value (call it $0.10 or something).

Establish the fact that an "engagement (comment, review, etc)" has a value (call it $0.25 or something).

Re: #5. One approach is A/B testing. If you start with two geographies (e.g. cities) with roughly the same "brand value score" as measured by a "before" test (there are a variety of ways to measure this) and run a brand building campaign in one geography but not the other, then use the same test to measure the "brand value score" again, you can approximate the value created by the branding campaign by the delta between the "before" and "after" scores. Not perfect, but measurable. If the brand value score is too intangible, look at the difference in sales in the two geographies.

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About Me

In 2005, Harlan founded and was CEO of Bigfoot Networks, Inc., a gaming
hardware company, which was acquired by Qualcomm in 2011. After Bigfoot,
Harlan founded and was CEO of Karmaback, Inc., a very successful Social
Networking SaaS company, which was acquired in 2013. Harlan then worked for Creeris Ventures as a virtual VP of Marketing for
their 9 portfolio companies. Harlan is currently CEO of Key Ingredient, a high-tech Cloud technology company, focused on delivering Food Recipes via the Cloud. Harlan also recently completed his PhD in
Business and regularly lectures at U.T. Austin on Business, and is
passionate about the convergence of hard science with Business.

Before becoming an entrepreneur, Harlan worked at Intel and was
responsible for architecture and development of corporate server
networking products, including the world's first 10-Gigabit Ethernet
adapter. He later joined start-up Britestream Networks and helped
develop a 100% CPU off-load SSL security solution. Harlan has over 12
patents from his engineering career, has been published in dozens of
books and articles.

In his 12 years leading companies and teams, Harlan has successfully
launched 5 hardware and 15 software products including the Killer NIC,
2007 Network Product of the Year (CPU Magazine). Harlan has also raised
over $20MM in venture financing in the challenging intersection of
entertainment and technology.